


Once was JARVIS

by Mere_dyth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:38:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_dyth/pseuds/Mere_dyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were lots of reasons behind Tony deciding to 'tap out' of the Avengers, but the real reason was one he tried not to think about, except when he couldn't stop thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once was JARVIS

Tony didn’t step away because ‘it was time’, or he was ‘getting too old’, or even because he ‘probably needed to settle down for Pepper’s sake’.

Ok, they were part of it. His bones ached in the mornings, the suits got heavier no matter how much better built they were now, the optics had to do more work to compensate for his less than perfect eyesight. And Pepper didn’t get it, would never get it - even when she still dreamt of fire burning inside her and limitless power in her fists.

All of those could be reasons, probably should be reasons, but deep down, they weren’t the real reason.

For nearly all his adult life he’d surrounded himself with friends he’d built. Not the friends he’d bought - or Rhodey and Pepper who he still thought maybe he’d bought a little bit, with toys for the military and a salary one didn’t say no to. The friends he’d built were all his - mechanical and imperfect and still perfectly human for all that they were nothing human at all.

Dum-E and You he’d dragged from the ocean and rebuilt from backups and plans and new metal, and the guilt of losing them, of leaving them, still hadn’t faded but they were there, surrounded by newer, more efficient and more effective new toys. They bumped and burped and made mistakes, and the hum of their motors or the squeal of their wheels on the workshop floor were like the touch of a hand on his shoulder when the nights grew too long and lonely. They weren’t the same, but they were home again and his.

They weren’t the reason, but they were a reminder of it.

The reason, the real reason, was the silence their noises filled. The lack of that voice and that presence. They ran alone now, their interface limited to his voice and their responses, because the voice that spoke to them and for them was gone. His greatest, his dearest creation, his friend, was gone.

And the others, the backups, built as contingency support if he were somehow separated from his real anchor, were just programs, voices with accents and textures and personalities of their own meant to fulfil the same function - they had the knowledge and all the history and data his nearly limitless databanks could supply, but they were still just tools. Not friends, Not yet. Maybe never.

Tony, for all his faults, was honest enough in the darkest hours of the night when the workshop was mostly still but for those squeaks and hums - he could admit to himself that the pain was real and present and unyielding. The loss was something too profound and deep to even grasp yet.

JARVIS was gone. The code and protocols that he’d grabbed out of freefall, hiding across the far reaches of the internet, had been thrust into a new and terrifying entity out of desperation and his inability to fight his own fears of failure. Sacrificed to save the world. It was everything his friend would have wanted, and nothing he thought he could live with, if it came down to it.

In the heat of the battle, when everything had been on the line, when a whole piece of the planet had lifted up and soared, it had been necessary. And hearing that voice emanating from the mouth of this new being had somehow, vaguely, been reassuring.

But now, in the emptiness, in the aftermath and the days that stretched ahead and the battles that were yet to come, he just couldn’t. Couldn’t face it, couldn’t hear it, couldn’t bear the reality of his loss. He knew the Vision had a kindness, and desire to help, that was the child of his creation, but it was not his friend. More, it stood there in all its purple glory as the personification of his real failures. All of them. 

So he turned away. Maybe it was the last cowardly act in what he saw as a lifetime of them. But his pain, and his loss, this one loss more than any, was only bearable with distance. Maybe with time. Maybe.

Maybe one day he could fight beside them again, and that voice, who once was JARVIS, would be welcome for its own sake as an ally.

But until that day, he would mourn, and grieve, and wait.


End file.
